The Mycenaeans entered Greece from the north or northeast c.2000 BC, displacing, seemingly without violence, the older Neolithic culture, which can be dated as early as 4000 BC These Indo-European Greek-speaking invaders brought with them advanced techniques in pottery, metallurgy, and architecture.

The exact relationship of MycenaeanGreece to Crete between 1600 and 1400 BC is extremely complex, with both areas evidently competing for maritime control of the Mediterranean.

The Mycenaean commercial empire and consequent cultural influence lasted from 1400 to 1200 BC, when the invasion of the Dorians ushered in a period of decline for Greece.

Evidence of Mycenaean presence is found in the Cyclades, Rhodes, Sicily, and Italy, although where political control ended and trade began is unknown.

The prosperity of MycenaeanGreece was due largely to an expansion of trade: Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and the Hittite Empire were all ruled by wealthy palace-based governments, which fostered international exchange.

A number of factors probably brought Mycenaean culture to an end, but a major one was probably the movement of the Sea Peoples, which affected the Middle East at the same time (See c.

In the 8th century BC Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages anciet greece for kids which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization.

Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges.

From 650 BC onwards, the aristocracies had to fight anciet greece not to be overthrown and replaced by populist leaders called tyrants (tyrranoi), a word which did not necessarily have the modern meaning of oppressive dictators.

Mycenaean society: the evidence of archaeology and Homer The Mycenaean period, 1580 - 1100 B. C., was a time of relative peace in MycenaeanGreece.

Much of what is known about Mycenaean society comes from Dr. Schliemanns archaeological finds, and the decipherment of the Linear B tablets, by Michael Ventris in 1952, that have been found through out MycenaeanGreece.

Mycenaean society had an overly specialized economy, evidence of a highly civilized society, the decipherment of Linear B tablets has supplied historians with evidence of a wide range of professions: Rowers bound for Pleuron...

Mycenaean civilization[mIsEnE´un] Pronunciation Key, an ancient Aegean civilization known from the excavations at Mycenae and other sites.

The great Mycenaean cities : Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes, Orchomenos : were noted for their heavy, complex fortifications and the massive, cyclopean quality of their masonry, while Minoan cities were totally unfortified.

See W. Taylour, The Mycenaeans (1964); A. Samuel, The Mycenaeans in History (1966); G. Mylonas, Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age (1966); W. McDonald, Progress into the Past (1967); J. Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (2d ed.

The Aegean, under Mycenaean domination from about 1450 BC onward, became the scene of a uniform civilization, although local differences can be distinguished, especially in the style of pottery decoration.

Mycenaeans were now in control of places on the western coast of Anatolia such as MILETUS, which Minoans had colonized before them.

In one view, the Mycenaens were overwhelmed by the first wave of Greeks to invade from the north and settle in their lands; but this is incompatible with a belief that the language of the Linear B script is Greek.

The Mycenaeans' urban building, military organization, and Trade seem to have been partly copied from a few preexisting, non-Greek, Bronze Age culturesnamely, the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, the Hittite kingdom of Asia Minor, and especially, the Minoan Civilization of Crete.

One was in central Greece: the plain of Boeotia (with the cities Thebes and Orchomenus vying for supremacy).

But the years of occupation there taught Mycenaean rulers certain organizational skillssuch as improved architectural techniques and the use of Cretan Writing (adapted at this time, as the Linear B script)that ushered in 200 years of the Mycenaean heyday in mainland Greece, ca.

In Greece, however, they were localized because of the innate tendency of heroic mythology to localize its heroes, and because the folk-tale was preserved only when it was received into the heroic mythology.

Corresponding to the paramount importance of Mycenae in the Mycenaean age, two of the most famous cycles of Greek myths are attached to this town, that of Perseus and that of the Atreidae.

This reference to the Mycenaean age receives perhaps a certain corroboration from Homer's hint at a vassalship of Bellerophon, such as was unknown in historical times and even in the Homeric age, if by the Homeric age we understand that age in which the poems were ultimately composed.

Bronze weapons, war-scenes on art, Cyclopean defence walls, and the fact that male warriors were buried with their weapons provide evidence for the claim that the Mycenaeans were militaristic.

By the end of the sixth century, philosophers begin to question the metaphysical nature of the cosmos with inquiries into the nature of being, the meaning of truth, and the relationship between the divine and the physical world.

Pythagoras and his followers found the city of Croton and combine philosophy and literature with political activity as the foundation of their community.

Wright further argues that distinctly Mycenaean feasting practice evolved on the mainland in the Middle Bronze Age and provided important venues for formation of social identities, competition among emerging elites, alliance-building, and the mobilization of labor and surplus, while contributing to "the adoption of a common Mycenaean style and iconography" (49).

According to Wright, Mycenaean feasting was influenced by Minoan and Cycladic predecessors and itself influenced late second- and first-millennium societies on Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes, and in the Levant.

One of her more interesting arguments is that cooking meat on spits represented "a new and deliberate form of elite differentiation" after the destruction of the palaces, in contrast to the Mycenaean tradition of boiling in tripod cauldrons (194).

ccat.sas.upenn.edu /bmcr/2005/2005-04-49.html (1946 words)

History of Ancient Greece(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)

The Greeks are believed to have migrated into the Greek peninsula in about 1600 BC The history of Ancient Greece however is traditionally taken to begin the date of the first Olympic Games in 776 BC The period from 1600 to about 1100 is described in History of MycenaeanGreece.

The history of Greece is taken to end with the of Alexander the Great who died in 323 BC Subsequent events are described in History of Hellenistic Greece.

As Greece recovered economically its population grew the capacity of its limited arable land from about 750 the Greeks began 250 years of forming colonies in all directions.

www.freeglossary.com /History_of_Ancient_Greece (2784 words)

Mycenaean Civilization | Special Topics Page | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)

World Map, 2000-1000 B.C. World Map, 2000-1000 B.C. Mycenaean is the term applied to the art and culture of Greece from ca.

During the Mycenaean period, the Greek mainland enjoyed an era of prosperity centered in such strongholds as Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, and Athens.

In the Mycenaean palace at Pylosthe best preserved of its kindLinear B tablets suggest that the king stood at the head of a highly organized feudal system.

www.metmuseum.org /toah/hd/myce/hd_myce.htm (521 words)

Bryn Mawr - Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)

Shear's principal contribution to the knowledge of Bronze Age civilization was the systematic study of Mycenaean domestic architecture, which resulted from her excavation of the remains of private houses at the site of Mycenae in southern Greece, where she worked for many years in collaboration with her father, Professor George E. Mylonas.

Her study of Mycenaean houses led to the unexpected discovery that many aspects of the civilization of the Bronze Age are accurately recollected in the earliest works of Greek literature, the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, which purport to describe the era of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

In another book, published only a few weeks before her death, Dr. Shear studied the subject of kingship in MycenaeanGreece as it is reflected in the material remains of archaeology, in the contemporary documents of the Linear-B tablets, and in the rich mythological tradition of Greece.

Aphrodite Hotel is a family hotel located in the Greek Island of Samos in Greece, offering apartments and studios for rent in Marathokambos or Kambos beach of this Greek Isle of the Aegean Sea.

Marble statuette from the Greek islands, 3000 BCThe Greeks are believed to have migrated southward into the Greek peninsula in several waves beginning in the late 3rd millennium BC, the last being the Dorian invasion.

BC GreeceIn the 8th century BC Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilisation.

Although the settlement in quantity of Mycenaean "colonists" on Cyprus during the LH IIIA and IIIB periods is considered doubtful by most scholars, there is no doubt but that the LH IIIC period witnessed at least two major incursions of Mycenaean "refugees" into the island.

Further meteorological data concerning the climate of Greece in the 13th and 12th centuries may result in the partial or total confirmation of the postulated drought.

The virtue of Drews' treatment of the Mycenaean collapse is that he places it in the context of a much larger series of military, economic, and political changes that affected all of the "civilized world" of western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

What light do Linear B texts shed on the production and consumption of craft goods in Mycenaean Greece(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)

She observed: "the basic administration and organisation of the Mycenaean state had a certain degree of complexity which called for specialised terminology: this seems to have disappeared together with the end of the Mycenaean palaces" (1979: 104).

And then she continues: "the terminology of crafts and the other occupational words (…) fits in with this general picture: (…) some [of the terms] at least give the impression of an extreme sophistication and a high degree of specialisation".

In consequence of this, archaeological evidence still remains our first source of information for Mycenaean times, even if what palace really were and the level of development of Mycenaean civilisation would have remained a mystery without those fires that burnt Linear B tablets.

The interconnections extend to Asia Minor, to MycenaeanGreece, and to the Mediterranean islandsCyprus, Crete, and the Aegean archipelago.

The chronologies of the Mycenaean civilization in Greece and of the Minoan civilization on Crete are built upon contacts with Egypt, for Egypts chronology is considered reliable.

Two timetables are applied simultaneously to the past of Greece, one built on the evidence of Greece itself, the other on relations with Egypt; thus instead of any new discovery reducing the question to smaller confines, every subsequent discovery enlarged the confines and decreased the chances of finding a solution.

This fairly dense Mycenaean population on the western coast of the Peloponnese cannot but be brought into relation with the Homeric tradition of the dominion of Nestor, king of Pylos.

The fact that the Mycenaean civilization at the beginning of its second period gained a foothold on the coast and only much later spread inward to the plain of Sulima proves that the Mycenaeans came oversea.

The fact that the Mycenaean civilization came to the western Peloponnese oversea is retained by the mythical tradition according to which the Minyans immigrated to these parts.

Mycenaeans (named after the most famous palace site of the period, Mycenae.

Look at the hypotheses proposed regarding the Indo-European tribes and their effect on the people they purportedly replaced (i.e., the indigenous population called Pelasgians by Thucydides).

The Panathenaic games were held in her honor and the whole community participated.

www.carthage.edu /outis/martin.html (1187 words)

ANISTORITON: An Essay(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-10)

This is largely attributable to the fact that some of the greatest metalworking centers, such as MycenaeanGreece, were not well provided with metal ores, and therefore had to import most of their metals.

LH IIIA marks the beginning of the period of maximum Mycenaean expansion, and sees extensive developments in existing Mycenaean interests in Apulia, the Aeolian Islands and the Bay of Naples, where Vivara is now joined by the island of Ischia (Ridgway 1992:6).

Though Mycenaean pottery has been found on over 50 sites in Italy and adjacent areas, the quantity on most of them is very small; in some sites we have only a single sherd.

BC marked a revival of a large number of Mycenaean customs and practises within the changed religious historical, ideological and political context of the new age that followed upon the collapse of the Mycenaean world.

Their beginnings are sought in the local cult of the hero Pelops, who was looked upon as the mythical founder of the games which recall elements of Mycenaean hero cult and the funeral games in Homer'sIliad, organised by Achilles in honour of his dead friend Patroklos.

The former version, involving Pelops, is attributed to the Pisatans the old Mycenaean inhabitants of the region, while the latter version, with Heracles, is associated with the new Dorian tribe that conquered Elis and established their own god at Olympia, Zeus, who became the great deity of the sanctuary and the games.